1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to presence management and more particularly to centralized presence management of local and remote users.
2. Description of Related Art
Often time, users want to know the status of fellow users in a working environment. This may be especially important in a call center or customer service department where calls need to be queued up for a next available agent (i.e., user). Additionally, employers may be interested in seeing and verifying productivity of their employees.
Conventionally, software applications that allow a user to monitor phone status (i.e., presence) of local users exist. Typically, the local users all access phone calls via a PBX system that can provide the status. However, these conventional software applications are directed only to monitoring the status of phone calls. Other communication means, such as chat, cannot be monitored via these conventional software applications.
Presently, many individuals work at least part time from their homes. While conventional software applications allow for monitoring of local telephone use, these software applications cannot be applied to monitoring remote users.
As a result of the above mention problems, there is a need for a system that can monitor both local and remote users within a single homogenous system.